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Capitalism at work
Thursday, October 5, Eddie's Tea Bar, the Cement Works, Leicestershire
Working in Eddie's has given me a unique glimpse of how capitalism works. Eddie goes to the cash-and-carry and buys catering packs of bacon, beefburgers, white sliced bread, ketchup, etc, and then uses me at £3.60 an hour to convert the ingredients into food items that sell for 200 % profit. Eddie does not have a computerised till. His is strictly a cash business. There is a notice on the trailer wall next to the peeling Samantha Fox poster: "Please do not ask for a receipt, as refusal often offends."
He keeps the coins in an old Cadbury's Luxury Biscuits tin. It offends my sense of order to see the coinage jumbled up together, but it works well enough. Banknotes are kept in Eddie's apron pocket. I suspect that Eddie pays little tax or VAT, though he is vociferous enough on the subject of social security cheats. "They should be took to a island somewhere in the North Sea an' left to fend for themselves," he said this morning. "Though," he added compassionately, "I'd give 'em a packet of seeds an' a spade."
Eddie's biscuit tin is the proletarian equivalent of a Cayman Islands tax shelter. All it lacks is financial advisers and accountants. Eddie's wife does his «books» while watching the omnibus edition of EastEnders. It's a weekly ritual, apparently.
The lorry drivers provide another facet of globalisation. Some truckers have travelled three days to haul Romanian fridges to Bolton, England. Others have taken gerbil food from Bury St Edmunds to Hamburg and returned with a cargo of Hamburgian carrots, which they've dropped off at a warehouse in Stowmarket, Suffolk. This is madness.
As I serve each trucker, I make a point now of enquiring as to his ultimate destination and the nature of his load. I have thus come to the conclusion that capitalism is no way to run the world's economy — it is inefficient and it exploits workers such as myself.
I put this argument to Eddie as I was scraping the griddle clean with a spatula. He profoundly disagreed with my analysis and said, "If you carry on shoutin' for revolution, Moley, you'll find yerself outta a job so far yer stupid Birkenstock shoes won't touch the bleedin' ground."
Friday, October 6
Couldn't sleep for wondering about the necessity of hauling mineral water from Liskeard to Dundee. Scotland is awash with the stuff.
William and Gle
Gle
I was up most of the night going through Gle
Saturday, October 7
Gle
Living Without A Partner has been cancelled. I was the only one to turn up.
Inhale and exhale
Sunday, October 15, Ashby-de-la-Zouch
Pandora rang me today and sought my advice on whether or not she should confess to have smoked ca
Monday, October 16
The shadow of headlice infestation continues to fall across our house. What more can I do to exterminate the vile creatures? My mother went to the hairdresser's on Saturday, and her stylist, Sebastian, fled in horror to the colour mixing room after spotting a colony of them nesting at the nape of her neck. She is furious with me, and claims she hasn't been so humiliated since the wire from her Gossard bra poked out of her wedding dress at the register office when she married Ivan Braithwaite. Even my father, who is still in an isolation cubicle at the general hospital, has nits. What is going on? I told Gle
Tuesday, October 17
I read the following article in The Independent today: "Dr Pandora Braithwaite, the junior minister for fish, admitted in a Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman last night to having smoked ca
Wednesday, October 18
The whole country is talking about Pandora. According to a report in the Guardian, the demand for ca
Thursday, October 19
I returned to work at Eddie's Tea Bar today, and couldn't help but notice that many of our trucker customers were scratching their heads. Are the nits being transported throughout Europe? How long will it be before they have taken over the world? At 7pm, Gle
Friday, October 20
I am calmer now. Dr Wong prescribed Prozac and a course of aromatherapy. He said that I was suffering from stress. I told him about my unhappy childhood, and he was very understanding. Though I heard my mother vehemently denying it: "He was a very happy little boy," she told the doctor. "Until he got older and started reading Dostoevsky and that bleddy Kafka!" Pandora has sent me a get-well message, and suggested that I recuperate by reading Lord Archer of Weston-Super-Mare's latest volume. She later phoned and told me the astonishing news that, far from being vilified for her drugs confession, she is being strongly tipped for promotion.